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Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)

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Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)

#311

Post by TechnicalVault »

Schlagbohrer wrote: post #297
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual causes of electricity cost rises in Ireland being higher than Europe are: Lower population density on a grid without good connections to neighbours. Previous underinvestment in network infrastructure. Gas price rises combined with Ireland having less renewables that the EU average (middle of the pack for electricity, 3rd from bottom on total energy). Maybe saving the world a bit harder would have helped ke…

If Israel can build an electrical grid connection to Greece then Ireland should have no problem building good connections with France and the UK.

They do have 3 already and they're building 3 more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_high-voltage_transmiss...

The new one going to France will probably have the most impact initially, the French love to sell their Nuke's surplus capacity. The new British ones by the time they're finished should have access to British's big wind energy generation, much of which will be online at that point.

Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)

#313

Post by jodrellblank »

throw567643u8 wrote: post #115
jahnu wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This attitude is ill informed. Ireland is richer than it has ever been. Poverty and housing difficulties have nothing to do with reducing emissions. Ireland partly got rich by being a massive CO2 polluter per capita. Now we are rich it’s only fair we lead in transitioning to renewables. Renewables are cheaper now than most forms of energy production. Grids need investment. I despair at these short sighted and fairly…

[flagged]

> "This argument that we have to self destruct to have the moral highground"

That's not the argument they made.

> "they know windpower and solar are not viable long term"

Thanks for the nonsensical, unsupported, right-wing talking points, throwaway account. Great contribution.

> "Web search how many Chinese coal plants came online in the last six months."

I web searched and found that "China installed a record 315 GW (AC) of new solar capacity in 2025". The entire UK national grid is currently providing 35GW of power from all sources combined. That's 1/9th of the power China deployed in just solar panels just last year. And China deployed 119GW of wind turbines in the same year as well.

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/01/28/china-adds-315-gw-of-...

Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)

#314

Post by TremendousJudge »

pjc50 wrote: post #255
TremendousJudge wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-consumption-by-count... China is the world's top consumer of coal, and accounts for more than 50% of the world's total consumption of coal.

People keep forgetting in all the China-posting that China is a country of 1.4 billion people, approximately 256 times the size of the Irish population, and therefore it's not really surprising when it tops a "top consumption" or "top production" list of any kind. (second most populous after India) Alternatively, if all Ireland was a city in China, it would not be in the list of top 50 cities by population.

While it's not surprising that's in the top, it's surprising by how much. ~1/7th of the world population, but ~55% of coal consumption is pretty unbalanced IMO. Of course, the real reason why is that China is the world's factory so the energy consumption is huge as well.

I think the real takeaway here is that the world depends on the industrial production of China, which is powered by coal. We are all using that coal to buy cheap Chinese manufactured goods, and the sooner we come to terms with this the better. Whether a single country uses coal or not is irrelevant for tackling carbon emissions, if we're all basically exporting our carbon emissions to China.

Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)

#315

Post by ceejayoz »

jodrellblank wrote: post #246
ceejayoz wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Batteries are cheaper and faster to make in large quantities. No economy on the planet needs 24/7 peak power production. The times humans work correspond nicely with the times the sun is out.

Daytime doesn't mean the sun is out; the UK has heavy cloud cover and sunset near 4pm in mid-winter. https://grid.iamkate.com/ shows the UK is currently getting 10% of grid power from Solar at 3:30pm in March.

Sure. That's why there's the "interconnectors" section further down; the UK can take advantage of the fact that it's rarely simultaneously dark and zero wind across entire continents.

Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)

#316

Post by jnsaff2 »

sampo wrote: post #144
bramhaag wrote: post #45

https://beyondfossilfuels.org/europes-coal-exit/ keeps track of coal phase-out commitments. 24 European countries still use coal generators, and 6 have not even planned to phase them out (Serbia, Moldova, Turkey, Poland, Kosovo, Bosnia). Never used coal power: Albania, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Switzerland, Norway Phased out: 2016: Belgium 2020: Sweden, Austria 2021: Portugal 2024: United…

Estonia has lots of oil shale (not same thing as shale oil). They never needed to import coal, because they have their own fossil fuel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Estonia#Oil-shale

This is true. A nuance often missed. Different rock (that is considerably worse in several ways, needs heavy fuel oil to be added to actually burn and has I think even higher co2 output per unit of energy) but kinda the same.

Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)

#317

Post by brohee »

catlifeonmars wrote: post #145
sunaookami wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why even make it about nuclears vs coal? Both are bad, both are hazards and both are not green energy.

What’s wrong with nuclear energy?

Not cost competitive with solar+batteries in many locales (less so the closer to the poles), and no learning curve, if anything a negative learning curve, nuclear never was more expensive than new nuclear.

And off course societal (and geopolitical) acceptance issues.

Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)

#318

Post by owenversteeg »

throw567643u8 wrote: post #95
4ndrewl wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how the international energy market works. You still have to buy your own, locally produced energy at international rates. The huge energy price spikes are down to wars in Ukraine (gas, which is also used for electricity production) and the Middle East.

Taiwan and perhaps other Asian countries that successfully make stuff don't expose their industries to this, the government sets a fixed energy price for them rather than leaving them at the whim of speculators.

I agree that the government should ensure low energy prices for industry, but Taiwan is a remarkably poor example.

Taiwan's energy policy is, as far as I know, the most pants-on-head stupid of any country in the world. As anyone knows, they are a small island at constant risk of a sea blockade and yet rely on sea imports for 98% of their energy. Not only that, but they _had_ more domestic production (nuclear) that they have been phasing out. Writing giant checks to import yet more oil by sea instead of boosting domestic production is a terrible idea for so many reasons.

Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)

#319

Post by gadders »

cauliflower99 wrote: post #70

Irish man here - Over the last few years, we've graduated from providing cheap energy to now importing most of our energy. We've seen huge energy price increases as a result. We're seeing more and more cost-of-living protests, the war now means more will suffer with fuel prices and we're still going ahead with closing down energy suppliers (this is a 2025 article but the point still stands). To anyone praising these…

Same in the UK. Instead of us generating electricity via coal, we get other people to do it less cleanly and import it instead. That way our hands are clean.

Re: Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)

#320

Post by linhns »

s_dev wrote: post #129
throw567643u8 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China >"China is the world's top electricity producer from renewable energy sources. China's renewable energy capacity is growing faster than its fossil fuels and nuclear power capacity.[1] China installed over 373 GW of renewables in 2024, reaching a total installed renewable capacity of 1,878 GW by the end of the year. The country aims to have 80% of its total energ…

With its population and size, China will top production. But their coal plants have been coming up more than every other country combined. It's the percentages, not the absolutes.
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